Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly can I just defend the member for Goldstein after that tirade from the member for Kennedy. The member for Goldstein is well known in this parliament for having a great heart for the people of rural Australia and the people on family farms and knowing the importance of those farms to rural Australians. If anybody is well received in rural and remote Australia, it is the member for Goldstein. I would recommend to the member for Kennedy that he invite the member for Goldstein to his electorate of Kennedy, take a wander around the electorate of Kennedy and see how well the member for Goldstein will be received there.

The legislation we are debating, Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2006-2007 and cognate bills, is about the budget. I will refer immediately to the benefit to rural Australians. We have had an issue about age pensions, particularly for people who have had long associations. I am coming off what the member for Kennedy said about this government’s desire to protect and care for people on the family farm, or people who have retired from a family farm, where that farm and the asset around it no longer have the ability to maintain an income for them, yet the people have had a long history with the farm or the small property: they have that connection with the land but they cannot realise the asset or lease the land.

This government, in its wisdom, has been looking at this issue over a 12-month period. I commend the Treasurer for coming forward with the proposal announced in this budget that will assist almost 10,000 age pensioners in rural Australia by improving the treatment of rural land under the pension assets test. From 1 January 2007, the family home and surrounding land of such people will be exempt from the age pension asset test where they have had a 20-year connection with the land and they cannot realise the asset or lease the land. This will be of major benefit and take a lot of pressure off families who have found themselves in difficult circumstances while living in the family home.

One of the things that I said in my local area before the budget was introduced was that we desired that the Roads to Recovery program would not only be kept in place but also be improved. In other words, we asked the government for more money. When I was questioned as to what I wanted out of the budget, I wanted more Roads to Recovery money for the people of Gippsland, particularly for councils in McMillan. The region has been strongly funded again. I am pleased to see that as part of the overall program we are also spending $24.5 million on the Pakenham bypass.

People know how important that bypass is. I met a friend of mine, George Barker, at the weekend. He travels every day from Bunyip all the way into the city to work on building projects there. He does that six days a week. He is what they call a former; he works with concrete. He is very talented in his work. He says it is a nightmare coming home. Each night it takes him 20 to 30 minutes to get from Officer to Pakenham, which is a distance of about five or six kilometres. On Friday nights and long weekends, it is absolute chaos. The Pakenham bypass should have been built by now except for the politics that went on in the whole process of winning and losing the seat of McMillan. We should have been standing on asphalt; instead, we are standing on dirt. I will tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker Jenkins—I know you will be vitally interested, because I know you are interested in Gippsland—that the progress of the Pakenham bypass is going very well. The whole 30 kilometres will be finished by 2007.

Five councils in McMillan have done very well out of our roads program. Ten years of responsible economic management allowed the coalition to invest $5 billion in transport infrastructure nationwide from 2005-06 to 2006-07. The Latrobe City Council, South Gippsland Shire Council, Bass Coast Shire Council, Cardinia Shire Council and, with the persuasive representation of CEO Glenn Patterson and Councillor Gary Blackwood, the Baw Baw Shire Council will receive a 25 per cent boost to their funding as part of the Roads to Recovery program.

I was amazed to see some people criticise what we put into roads. I do not know why. Out of the five councils in the McMillan electorate, South Gippsland received the highest amount of road funding. Bass Coast Shire Council’s total allocation for 2005-09 was $2,802,308. That should fix up a few potholes in Bass Coast area. Cardinia Shire Council will receive $4,862,866. Latrobe will receive $5 million. South Gippsland will receive a whopping $7,273,366. Local road funding has never had a stronger supporter than the Howard government and the Minister for Local Government, Territories and Roads, Jim Lloyd, who has visited my electorate many times. They are to be congratulated.

The total amount allocated to Roads to Recovery in the seat of McMillan will increase from $21 million to more than $26 million over the life of the program. The program was originally put in place to boost neglected roads—roads that had been neglected by state governments. Communities called out to us and said, ‘Look, you’ve got to fix our country roads.’ What we are trying to do here is improve the safety of roads. There are 500 people killed across Australia in a year, many in Victoria and many on country roads. This goes a long way to increase the safety of roads, especially in areas where there is the black spot program, which has also been funded once again.

We have now topped all this up with a supplementary allocation for funding for Roads to Recovery in the budget—an additional year of funding to be spent in the four years of the program. I am delighted about that. In other words, we have brought the money forward. Councils can get on with their programs. AusLink’s Roads to Recovery program cuts red tape and delivers vital road funding right where it is needed, directly to councils. It will continue to ensure that vital local road upgrades continue to support local communities, boost local industries and employment and increase road safety.

Transport is a major issue in my electorate, as it is in every rural electorate across Australia, although my electorate is urban and rural, ranging from small business operators in Pakenham to dairy farmers in South Gippsland, beef farmers in West Gippsland and South Gippsland, potato farmers in Thorpdale and throughout other parts of the electorate up to Gembrook and the workers of the Latrobe Valley. The roads in McMillan are safe and efficient to use. We must make sure that they are safe and efficient for everyone. That is why this budget is a great boost for the whole of Gippsland—West Gippsland, South Gippsland, and East Gippsland, into Minister McGauran’s area.

Tax, of course, is very important to everybody, particularly to people on low incomes. The low-income tax offset will increase from $235 to $600. It will phase out at $25,000 to $40,000; therefore, low-income earners will not pay tax until their annual income is over $10,000. The Howard government is the best friend middle Australia ever had. Why? Because the government will expand eligibility for the large family supplement to include families with three children. What a shame mine are all grown up! With effect from 1 July this year, additional assistance will be provided to nearly 350,000 Australian families, with a payment of an extra $248 per year. There will be $32 million to protect our elderly by promoting best practice in aged care funding. There will be around 3,000 unannounced spot checks at homes, up from 536 in 2004, and mandatory police checks for all volunteers.

Like many people in my electorate, I was surprised to hear of the elder abuse case, because we have such fantastic care. To a degree, that was a police matter. It does not matter who you talk to—members on either side of this parliament or on the independent benches—one thing they will say to you is that the people who deliver aged care in their electorates do a sterling job. They do it effectively and efficiently and only very special people can deliver that type of care. Wherever I go, from Leongatha to Foster out to Moe and Newborough, into Warragul and Trafalgar and down to Pakenham—the whole of the electorate—I never cease to be amazed by the people who deliver the care to our elderly, whether in hostel accommodation or in high-care accommodation. They obviously have a very special way about them. So too do the people who deliver church services and entertainment into the homes of the elderly. My mother-in-law recently moved into accommodation care in Pakenham—a new development there—and I am probably seeing the best in aged care that we have ever seen. This has been a long and ongoing dispute which the Minister for Community Services, who is at the table, will remember well. As a parliament, we have struggled with these issues over a long period of time. We now have delivered well on aged care, and I congratulate the Howard government for the effort and the money they have directed towards elderly people.

The government accepted the recommendations of the Wheeler report into security and policing at Australia’s airports and will introduce a range of measures to implement these initiatives. There will be $100 million over four years to support that report. It is important that we give consideration not only for our border protection but also for airport security and the issues we have to address. You have seen the upgrading of security around this House, and you are seeing the upgrading of security at our airports. I believe that the government has moved appropriately as the community has demanded.

I turn now to universities, particularly the university closest to me, being Monash, which was formerly in my electorate but is now in the electorate of Gippsland. Sport is an issue out there. Following the changes the government made to universities and the way they organise themselves, the government have now put aside $10 million over four years to support regional universities, and that will be of great support to our university. We hope the government will also be looking at extending Monash’s opportunity to go down to places like Leongatha, to the education precinct down there, which is a unit we will build on. In the coming months, I will be putting all my efforts into making sure we have an extension, a lead passage for young people coming out of south Gippsland. Only about one-third of the young people coming out of Gippsland are going on to university, and that is something I would like to address in this term of parliament.

The sum of $36.7 billion over four years in reduced income tax will be important to everybody, but the superannuation changes have been the most well received changes. From my experience of wandering around my electorate and other parts of Gippsland, the first thing somebody says to me is: ‘The super that I see will be the super that I get. My tax is taken out. I can see that amount of money and that’s mine; there’s no more tax to pay,’ and that has been very well received.

I attended the family day care celebrations in my electorate just the other day with Margaret Aveling. I remember starting with Margaret Aveling and working on our first day-care program as shire councillor and shire president of the old shire of Pakenham. Margaret is still there today. I could say ‘after all this time’ but I would not be so rude. She is still committed to family day care, and she was the one who taught this young councillor a very good lesson about the importance of family day care. I thought I had the opportunity to argue with her at the time, but I learned very quickly that there are some people with whom you do not argue and Margaret Avling was one of them. Congratulations to Margaret and to all those people delivering family day care across West Gippsland.

The winners include parents who work. There are up to 25,000 new child-care places to 2009. Pensioners and carers, who are so important to me, will receive cash bonuses. There are tax cuts and the cutting of red tape for businesses and small businesses, which we heard so much about from Minister Bailey when she told us what she has been able to achieve for small business. Also included are the motorists, with the upgrading of the highway. Who are the losers? The losers include corporate cheats, because there will be more money for the investment watchdog. Illegal foreign fishermen are the targets of new funding. There is more money for combating our enemies—more money for defence. Party drug users will be the subject of a new campaign.

Then there is that old bugbear—the telemarketers who ring you up at 6 o’clock or 7 o’clock when you are just about to have dinner and have family time together. We are finding new ways not to be rude to them. Whilst the calls may be nuisance calls, the person on the phone is doing the job they are employed to do. People will be able to put themselves on a register so that they do not get those calls. I say to the Australian public: the people on the other end of the phone are often our sons and daughters, and that is the only job they can get at the moment—they are often transitory jobs—but they are doing a job. Many of us have served behind a counter, carted a bale of hay or been a worker like the member for Kennedy, who said that he earned the money for his first car by doing manual labour. So did I. I earned the money to buy my first car by carting hay. No-one was ever rude to us in those jobs, and no-one needs to be rude to the telemarketer, the young person who rings us, either. It is an opportunity to be nice to someone and to quietly say that you do not want to take their call.

This budget has been well received. More importantly, I suppose, today I have rung 22 schools to let them know they have received a benefit under our Investing in Our Schools program. I will not name them, but some primary schools around Gippsland are a disgrace and the Bracks government should have regard for them. If money coming to the Bracks government from the hydroelectric scheme is to be poured into schools, that government had better have a close look at Gippsland, because the situation of neglect down there is not good enough. As I said, I do not want to name those schools, because I do not want to embarrass them, but it is crucial that moneys be put into them as of now. The money from Investing in Our Schools has been very important to all schools and it is a pleasure to give it to them; but it only highlights the Bracks government’s neglect of schools in Victoria.

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